It's all Greek

Dear You,

It can't have been many years into my teaching career when I realized the job was essentially Sisyphean -- in one of the courses, for example, I'd start with The Scarlet Letter and progress through the year to The Great Gatsby. Year after year, never believing I'd ever reach the top with these boulders of knowledge. Year after year, starting over at the bottom.

So it was with every aspect of my duties. Is "alot" a word or two? Why is it funny to write after the death of a beloved pet that "I balled all night"? Which is used in this context: IT'S or ITS?

Soon it will be a decade since I sought to engage my students in these questions, and life now seems less Sisyphus than Tantalus. I'm up to my neck in possessions and people and prospects for ways to spend my time every day I awaken. My calendar is full, my bank account never quite emptied at the end of each month. Yet I sense something always out of reach. Even were I to stoop to seek a sip of it, I understand I will not slake my thirst.

Okay, life is a quest. But where am I headed here?

Clutter

Dear You,

I'm in my basement "office" -- a space that includes my sewing machine and all the stuff that goes with it (including boxes of cloth), two bookshelves, and, at this season, a long table with yet-to-be-wrapped gifts. Around the corner are machines for washing and drying clothes, with shelves of cooking implements along the opposite wall and across from them many of the tools I've accumulated over the years. Essentially, it's wall-to-wall clutter down here, with paths for walking.

The problem is that other areas of this house are similarly cluttered. I have not yet ventured into the garage in this narrative, but you may imagine it. Nor will I even bother to describe the house in Florida, where I'm headed early next month. Long ago I knew it was easier to acquire than to dispose of . . . I just never dreamed how vast was that gulf.

In Russo's recent "Bridge of Sighs" the father sits in a car with the narrator, his son, parked across the street from a mansion just put on the market, one he will never be able to afford. He speculates whether anyone could live in such a house and NOT be happy. I paused there and thought of the line "Nature abhors a vacuum." A big house begs to be filled. If you have two houses, THEY beg to be filled. And I thought for the umpteenth time that the more stuff one has, the more it all detracts from a true pursuit of happiness.

It's not the stuff. It's never been the stuff. And it's a good time of the year to think about that.

Well, well, well

Dear You,

The title of this piece probably should be "Medium Rare." It's the end of the year, and for me it means beef Wellingtons -- plural. I really enjoy cooking, and in December I have more chances than usual. Different combinations of guests arrive on different occasions, but the meal is always a beef Wellington.

This is an all-day deal for me. In the morning I season the tenderloin and put it into a 450 degree oven until it's well browned but very rare. Then it sits on the rack on top of the stove the rest of the day, tempting me to shave a bit here and there as I pass by.

About an hour before dinner, I mix a paste, starting with a liver pate as the base, adding whatever else that's handy -- chopped basil? Chopped pecans? Why not? This gets troweled onto the meat. Long ago I gave up making my own dough, opting for puff pastry from the frozen foods area. This has softened, and I roll it out to wrap the meat. Back into the oven, while I make a wine sauce reduction and heat the gravy for the potatoes.

No need to discuss what else is for dinner -- when I roll this baby out to the table for carving, everything else on the table is just part of the scenery. Wine, anyone?

Ghosts

Dear You,

Odd how a glass of wine poured slowly over a memory makes the past more poignant. I was thinking about the old Ben Franklin store on Main Street, and all of a sudden I saw myself as a teenager, headed past it on the way to Steadman's News Stand. It was after school, and I had my papers to fold, put into my canvas bag and distribute along my route.

How lively and interesting was that street. If I weren't running so late, I might stop for a cherry phosphate at Leonard's Drug Store, where that pretty redhead with the big blue eyes would mix it for me. Or I could pop into Seip Hardware and see if Becky was there to talk with her father. I'd pass McLain's, where I'd had my lunch of chili and rye bread earlier that day.

Wherever I went, people knew me and took an interest in my doings . . . especially when I was misbehaving. In that era, I could be sure I would be spoken sharply to -- or worse, someone would call my parents and turn me in!

All gone. Fifty years later, those businesses are as dead as their owners, and many of the storefronts are papered over, the spaces empty. Parking spaces are plentiful now.

In "Bridge of Sighs," Russo captures the long-ago presence of a small town, and reading it I cannot help thinking that those places have all given way. Driving through them now is a little like reading Wilder's "Our Town" over and over again -- sad, like the long-lost events of everyone's youth.

Scot Free

Dear You,

Christmas is coming, and with it the memory that bubbles to the surface each year at this time. The statute of limitations is behind me now, and the Ben Franklin store on Main Street gone these many years, so I guess I can 'fess up.

I was a paperboy then, peddling the Toledo Blade on Sundays and my local paper the other six days -- I'd been able to save up for a nice bike and had money to spend for Christmas. But I was also young enough to Test Limits and not old enough to understand Consequences -- okay, I really don't remember who and what I was; I'm reaching for Cause/Effect here, I guess. But, to come clean: I stole the Christmas presents that year.

It's true -- my mother, my father, my two brothers, and even my best friend all got gifts from me that they thought I'd paid for. But all I did was walk into the store with my partly empty canvas news bag, slip one or two items inside, buy some Pez or FanTan gum and walk out. I can almost recall the thrill of "getting away with something." And in my defense, I have not taken anything from a store since.

I didn't get away with it -- not really. For of all those early Christmases in Ohio when I was a boy, I remember only that one, and it gives me no pleasure at all.

Zen and the Art of Raking Leaves

Dear You,

The sun must be shining, even if it's just a little. That's quite necessary. And it is even better if the air is moving a bit -- perhaps a gentle breeze, but nothing more.

Dress warmly, but not overly so. A light jacket should do it, something that when the time comes can be easily removed and hung nearby. Wear a cap.

Do you have portable music? In my case, it's a little MP3 player. Load it with soothing music -- not Rock, oh, goodness no. You'll be worked up enough without all that blood-pumping sound going through your head. I like Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, and Cher singing those old romantic songs -- "Cry Me a River" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and "As Time Goes By." Yearning and pathos, yes?

By all means use nothing that plugs into an outlet or requires gasoline. That should be obvious. Above the music all you want to hear is the sounds of cars passing by and the rasping of the rake. Don't move too quickly. Rake leaves into a mound, spread the tarp nearby, rake the leaves onto it, drag it to the curb.

Repeat. "Do it again, yes, do it again" sings Linda. And don't worry if more leaves are falling onto the areas you are clearing. It is what it is.

Carpe Diem indeed

Dear You,

Have you noticed an increase in the hustle-bustle these days? It's not just the end-of-year rush that explains it all, I think. These are the days of instant everything, and it seems to have raised everyone's expectations in unpleasant ways.

A daughter-in-law observed with wonder that all she had to do was insert her credit card into Redbox, press a couple of buttons, and out would pop a DVD movie to take home with her groceries. While watching another d-in-l working on the computer last evening, I noted her frustration when screens wouldn't shift fast enough to suit her. And today I caught myself wondering why a neighbor in Florida had not yet responded to my email . . . that I sent two days ago.

In the taxi recently, the driver's story kept being interrupted by his cell phone. Today the piano tuner stopped his work because his cell phone rang. The electrician who fixed a shorted wire last week made several calls on his cell phone. And in church yesterday, a purse nearby quietly interrupted the service by starting to ring. In short, we all have a sort of electronic leash with us now, and communication is supposed to be instantaneous.

Get it now. Just give us your credit card number. Now. While some of these changes in modern life are just great, I think we're starting to miss some of the value of taking more time. And I'm especially unhappy about the increase of drivers who want to push me out of the way in their rush to get to . . . where? McDonald's, for instant food?

Foreign Climes

Dear You,

On my return from three weeks in the South, my muse suggested that it seemed I "had been in a foreign country." Judging by my senses this morning, I had.

When I stepped outside to fetch the newspaper, tiny ice pellets struck my glasses. The sky was shades of gray and leaves completely obscured my lawn and the flower beds. On the patio the four burning bushes had turned their greens to the red that named them. Later, at the grocery store, everyone was dressed in layers, and we all leaned into the wind as we walked the lot toward the entrance. Rosy cheeks indeed.

How different it was 1500 miles away and -- was it really just yesterday? Shorts and a tee shirt, palms tossing their heads gently to the sides against that blue-blue sky, long-legged birds wading at the side of the lake in search of their breakfasts, folks waving from their golf carts on the way to the course.

For one reason and another I have missed crossing oceans, and only the border to Canada has ever interrupted my travels. No stamps in my passport. How odd, then, that after all those years of being a stay-at-home I find myself going from one foreign place to another.

Feeding Frenzy

Dear You,

Several years ago my brother David invited me to join him to fish the Niagara River. Long ago I gave up fishing, but I went for the companionship and brought a camera. We climbed down the gorge and clambered among the rocks -- David and his son Justin attaching lures and casting into the river, me snapping picture after picture, my brother and nephew pulling fish after fish from the water. David explained that the fish were heading upstream to spawn and die -- they weren't at all hungry, but they instinctively bit at anything that looked like food.

Yesterday I thought of all that as I watched people go in and out of garage, yard, and estate sales on the streets near my Florida house. Around here, most people have reached the age when getting rid of stuff is more likely than acquiring more . . . yet, they marched in the houses and -- arms loaded with bargains -- marched back out, to their golf carts (a primary mode of transport here) and minivans (much desired for their ability to haul visiting grandchildren to Disney World).

Who can resist what looks like food, even when there is no real hunger and when the lure is just plastic and feathers? Even on this trip upstream toward the inevitable end of our journeys, we still snap at any old lure that is cast in our way.

Less Stately Mansions

Dear You,

Since I had no intention to buy anything at the estate sale, I Sherlocked through the rooms, picking up conclusions. The mistress had died -- no clothes remained in her half of the closet, and the bathroom held only male accessories. The master was shedding most of the possesions, retaining only what would fit in his new, smaller abode-to-be (this bed is for sale; that one is not).

Doubtless they met in college -- a little place in Missouri, judging by the memorabilia on the bookselves. One of them wrote papers on a manual Smith-Corona portable typewriter (still in its case, the ribbon worn through to useless). She was an English major, and later taught the subject in high school (why did she hang on to that collection of Cliff's Notes?); he studied something more technical, and when computers came into vogue, tried to keep up with the changes, even buying a couple of the Dummies series.

They wore out a Monopoly game with the grandchildren, who visited them in this over-55 community, and no doubt took them out on the pontoon boat moored off the dock behind the house ("Taking bids until Saturday at noon!!!") Fishing tackle was still nicely organized on one wall of the garage. She liked to play bridge; poker was his game. They once traveled to Haiti.

In "The Chambered Nautilus" Holmes wrote: "Build more stately mansions, oh, my soul!" Here, however, the little lake-side house was giving way to a smaller space, and somewhere, someone in a bigger home will be downsizing to this one. And probably will be having a garage sale before the moving van arrives.

Lame Brain

Dear You,

Okay, the hype got to me. Instead of turning off the TV and opening my novel, I watched the whole two hours of CSI/Without A Trace. After all, I thought, there might not be new shows for awhile, since the Hollywood writers have gone on strike.

So I watched the bodies pile up: a closeup of the pretty girl, whose brains were bashed in as she was taking a bath (candles burned while she sipped the last of her wine before hearing the door creak open) -- a closeup of the pretty wife, brains bashed in and stuffed into the trunk of her old, dust-covered car (she worked hard for a living and didn't deserve to die) -- closeup photos of three other pretty victims, showing the jewelry the killer had retained as gifts to his (pretty) sister, who Didn't Have a Clue . . . don't serial killers ever bash in the brains of ugly women?

Meanwhile, the head of the crime lab and the head of the FBI pop in and out of each other's shows, jetting between Las Vegas and New York City and exchanging Meaningful Looks; at the same time, their minions do a lot of talking, and to cover the banality of what they say, they peer closely at The Evidence with little flashlights and take close-up photos of candy wrappers with big cameras and long lenses.

And why all this carnage? (a) the killer was misunderstood by his father, and (b) the killer loves and yearns for his cute, blond son. Oh . . . I don't want to drag out the suspense any longer: at the end he apologizes to his sister (whom he did NOT kill), and blows his brains out with a gun that everyone knew he had hidden under his arm.

As I thought about the show later, the question which lingered was this: what difference does it make if writers such as the one(s) for this show are . . . or are not . . . on strike? Well, not the only question -- I wondered why I had not put in another two hours with my novel.

Damn Yanking

Dear You,

As occupations go, scarcely any I recommend less enthusiastically than weeding. While I recognize some of the pleasures of gardening (the world benefits from, and is the more beautiful for, flowers; and I know several people who actually enjoy growing some of their own food) agriculture is impossible without the regular extirpation of weeds.

I seldom approach this task, however necessary, reluctantly if not humbly on my knees, a vicious-looking little hand rake nearby. This tool, however, is rarely needed, since as if to know they are unwanted the weeds root shallowly, and they yield easily to the tugging. The pile grows beside me, these unnamed dead. I do not bother learning their names -- genus: weeds. Enough said.

It is a thankless task. The fruits of all my labor end ignominiously in a trashbin, tomorrow to be hauled away to the landfill -- a sort of vegetative Potter's Field. I wash my hands of the entire matter.

Left Behind

Dear You,

When I studied psychology it was called approach-avoidance. The term was used to describe a condition that both attracts and repels -- a child's ambivalance towards a brutal father, for example. It is how I think about attending a high school reunion.

There is much to attract, and driving the hundreds of miles to reach that small Ohio town is an exercise in whetting an appetite. Will my pals all be there? How about that girl I spent my afternoons dreaming about all those years ago? (I watched from an upstairs window on Kilbourne Street as she passed on the sidewalk, her red ponytail swaying in time with her skirt.) Even the building itself -- what memories will it evoke, just standing at that imposing entrance?

The reality of a reunion, of course, never can match the expectation. It's not just the forcible reminders that we are on the downward slope of life and that so many (more each year!) are already dead, reminders of one's own mortality. Nor is it even the dreary surroundings -- the threadbare hall, the bland food, the over-loud background music with all those silly '50s songs. It's really that there is nothing more to say.

Classmates who left town are the most interesting; those left behind seem . . . well, rather dull by comparison. On the drive home I keep thinking that I didn't so much leave there as I somehow managed to escape. And I wonder why I will probably come to the next gathering.

Sweating the big stuff

Dear You,

She seemed impossibly small, and her heavy boots, leather gloves, and wide-brimmed hat made her all but disappear. She was the crew chief for the roofers who arrived this morning, and apparently the only one who spoke any English.

All day long she was on my roof. In the morning, she helped the four men she brought with her in the truck remove my old, worn-out shingles. Except for accepting my offer for more water and some ice for the cooler, she never stopped. Her crew worked steadily, talking little, wonderfully efficient.

I do not know if they ever stopped for lunch. I never saw them sitting around with cigarettes or sandwiches or even cups of water. In the hot, Florida sun they bent their backs and they stripped off that roof.

In the afternoon they put down the new underlayment and stacked bundle after bundle of new shingles, readying the job for tomorrow, when they will return to finish the contract. As the sun went lower in the sky and the breeze picked up, they scavanged the lawn for debris, even running a wheeled apparatus with a bar magnet to pick up any stray nails. The team leader was always there, quietly directing the various tasks, and she drove away at the wheel of that big truck. When I thanked her, she smiled beautifully.

I am amazed by those people who say we should close our borders to those -- like the ones I met today -- who will come to our country to do such arduous tasks as I watched today. I couldn't do it. Would you want to?

Fish and Relatives

Dear You,

It has been observed that fish and visiting relatives have a similar shelf life. In three days, they smell, and I begin to wish they would be called away. Other guests, it seems to me, have an even shorter shelf life.

On the second day of a stopover by even good friends, the demands of hospitality seem to deepen and I find my smile becoming rather fixed. The happiness I experienced on first greeting these people is a memory that grows harder to imagine with the passing hours. Indeed, it is obvious that evening that the joy of parting -- when? how much longer? -- will truly be a delight.

While my life is not without at least a modicum of drama, I find I have only enough conversation to carry me for a few hours. And how many games of cards can I endure without being seized with a desire for solitude? "Well," I say, not stifling my yawn," I guess I'll turn in now." And I pick up my novel en route to the bedroom.

An ancestor is reported to have observed: "Blessed are the comers and goers, and damn the comers and stayers." Interesting to note how much one inherits.

Promises, promises

Dear You,

If I were to make such claims, I would be embarrassed. The wrapper for my sandwich said in part: " . . . roasted turkey and lean Black Forest ham that tastes like a slice of heaven" and "bread, freshly-baked right in the restaurant for a deliciously soft center and incredible, crusty top." (the hyphen was there -- I would not have used it)

The sandwich, of course, was not just ordinary; without that wrapper I would have dismissed it entirely. An unmet expectation is always what lingers, don't you think? Certainly I did not stop at that Wendy's restaurant along the highway because I was looking for a heavenly repast. I was hoping for something to stave off the pangs of hunger at that hour, as well as somewhere to relieve my bladder.

That's another chapter -- a sign in the restroom held spaces for the attendent to note when he cleaned; the expectation, judging from the chart, was hourly. It was otherwise unmarked. And nearby was posted a notice, something to the effect of notifying management if the room was less than clean. I would describe it here, but who am I to suppress your appetite? I made the room, like the sandwich before it, serve its purpose.

Wisdom suggests here that I am not the one to broadcast aspersion. Should I be foolish enough to hold up a mirror at this point, certainly I would see unmet expectations and broken promises crowding the view.

Uphill, all the way

Dear You,

The Fitness Center here is indeed a "clean, well-lighted place," full of marvelous machines, neatly stacked weights, carpeted floors and -- lest we forget reality altogether -- a wall of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I spend these months in an age-restricted community; that means I don't mingle with very many people who have lived less than a half-century on the planet already, certainly I see none here this morning.

For awhile I walk the treadmill. If I press one button, I walk faster -- another, and I walk "uphill," although the view doesn't change -- I'm still staring at the big flat-screen television that hangs a few feet ahead and above me. That task complete, I do the circuit: a series of eleven cleverly designed machines that strains different parts of the body and in a scientific, orderly way. Each machine is a marvel of red plastic padding and stainless steel, with a variety of adjustments that tasks one's cleverness. When I am done, I see that I am back where I started. On to the rowing machine. Sit in the little bucket seat, hook feet into the straps, grab the "oar" and pull, pull, pull. Lots of motion, but again the scenery hasn't changed.

In my quixotic quest to regain the silhouette I lost long ago, I really am going nowhere. And I don't need to look into the mirrors to know that.

Migrations

Dear You,

These past two days I was part of the caravan moving south with the changing season. Thousands of us were funneling our way through the mountains and along the rivers from the Great Lakes toward the Gulf of Mexico. Minivans, fifth-wheelers, RVs of many colors filling the lanes of I-79 in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I-77 and I-26 in Virginia, I-95 through the Carolina and into Georgia before diverging for the coasts of Florida. The faces I scanned at roadside rests, fueling stations and restaurant tables were themselves topographical maps -- crenellations of age, some as craggy as the hills I saw outside my car window.

Ahhh, those hills. In late October, with cooler air and shortened days, the trees were in such splendor it made me wish I were a painter -- or at least a poet -- if only to capture them before the frosts turn them to drab and joyless stalks. Now, dressed like Joseph, they were indeed worth my envy.

The autumn of one's life can -- should! -- be so exuberant. Creation seems to have demanded that the stage before the finish should be a bursting forth of beauty and bounty. The sap of Spring and sun of Summer deserve no less. What had me wondering, then, was why so many of my fellow travelers on these highways looked so deflated . . . tired and unhappy and, well, old.

Go Phish

Dear You,

The Internet, said a workshop leader, is like the Wild West -- keep your gun handy. I was reminded of this today when I got a phishing email, supposedly from PayPal, the vendor I use to buy and sell with eBay online.

The mail looked legitimate. It warned me that there may have been illegal activity with my account, and would I "click here" to verify information to allow them to "unblock" it. When I clicked, I was taken to a web page that asked for several things -- in essence, my credit card information, security number and pin . . . everything you might like to have in order to go on a shopping spree.

Ordinarily, I'd just laugh, delete the message, and go on with my life. But this one made me mad. So I forwarded the email and the spurious URL to the boys at PayPal to track down the bad buys.

I write this not because I'm new to phishing expeditions -- I've had several in recent months -- but because of the unnecessary half-hour I had to put into the situation. Outside it's a beautiful day. But somewhere, really rotten and annoying people are working to spoil it. And I want them to pay, pal!

Ouch!

Dear You,

I read once that there is no such thing as a peripherally located ego -- each person, then, is egocentric. This is especially true in our beginnings. Indeed, I consider it a mark of adulthood when one starts to understand that he (or she) is not in fact the center of the universe.

It distresses me to encounter someone over the age of 30, say, who has not yet made such a transformation. A young woman of my acquaintance wears me out with her narcissism. This woman surely has difficulties -- don't we all? Her conversation rarely turns to the listener, who must patiently bear with the litany of her illness until he escapes. How refreshing, then, to talk with one who is sensitive to the world at large.

And it seems to me now that when one is so firmly fixated on the self, every pain -- every inconvenience -- every bump in the road becomes magnified. When someone is attuned to the sufferings of others it is easier to put his own into perspective.

Caught red-handed

Dear You,

By all accounts, the lobster is possessed of a small and simple brain. But according to a book I've recently read -- The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson -- lobsters have a remarkably complicated existence. Catching one is likewise a simple yet complex act: bait the cage, drop it into the water, wait, then haul it up. The cage is complicated, as are the decisions about when and where to place it, when and how to haul it back to the surface, which lobsters to keep and which to throw back into the water . . .

I thought of all that this morning, in conversation over a cup of coffee. Where was I at that moment, and how had I arrived at that time and place? I was struck by the image of a cone -- like that of the entrance to a lobster trap. Years ago I must have had quite a wide range of choices; one by one I narrowed my opportunities. And there I was holding that cup of coffee.

When the lobster enters the cone, it is in the kitchen, and that leads to the parlor. Isn't that an engaging image to explain the reality of the lobster's situation -- in effect, a trap? The point is that the lobster, and I, cannot go back and choose differently. We are where we are.

Well, all analogy leaks, my philosophy professor intoned one afternoon in 1962. So does this one. I'm not being prepared for a pot of boiling water . . .

. . . am I?

Our Lawn

Dear You,

Because I was away for the past two weeks, I returned to find a pile of accumulated mail and a lawn that resembled a meadow. The first was easier to deal with, since I could sit while I tossed credit card offers and solicitations for money in the wastebasket. The second, however, meant rolling up my sleeves.

I think it was the Stage Manager in Our Town by Thornton Wilder who observed that most men enjoy cutting their own lawns. No doubt he was saying something about the pride of ownership. In my case, however, having tended this particular lawn for the past 16 years, I really wouldn't regret to see its ownership passed to another.

Today I waited until the last sprinkle had faded and the sun had been out awhile before adjusting the wheels up a notch or two. Even so, I continually stopped, shut off the engine, tipped the beast sidewise and cleared the wad that refused to blow through the side discharge. An hour of that was enough -- the second hour challenged my fortitude.

There is something to be said about all manners of living -- and today I'm thinking how fine it is to have an apartment, leaving a landlord to cut the grass whenever he pleases.

Relaxation and Vacation

Dear You,

With the pace of travel I currently have set, I've been thinking about the process quite a lot. The past summer found me in Columbus, Seattle, Cheboygan, Long Island, Olean, Long Island again, Olean again . . . and I'm just back from two weeks on Cape Cod before heading south to Florida for three weeks. I write all this to remind myself where I've been and to know where I am.

Sure it's been fun, and it's always important to spend time with far-flung friends and family. But it's also work. At this moment bags are still to be unpacked and boxes emptied . . . before packing again for the drive south.

A few weeks ago I read through Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and what sticks are the visits made by the Bennett daughters. Travel was not at the distances I have recorded above, but they seemed much more leisurely and for longer periods. No rushing about. And when one of the girls arrived at her destination, the chief occupations seemed to be morning walks, afternoon talks, and long periods at the table, followed by cards or correspondence in the evenings. Books, for those who were literate and inclined to the life of the mind. Most notably, once arrived, they suffered no further expense.

These past two weeks tended to blur -- tickets on a boat or a train, meals at a variety of restaurants, browsing through one gift shoppe after another, "picking up stuff and talking about it" as I described to a relative. Yes, I took time to work on my aunt's quilt, and I very nearly finished a book -- The Secret Life of Lobsters. Relaxing? In truth, not enough to suit me. But soon I'm off again.

Those walls can no longer talk

Dear You,

For over twenty years I owned a cottage in New England. Ahh, the memories! At one point I even dreamed of retiring to live there -- a sort of poet's life. Very romantic, you know?

Dreams, however, are just that, and when the reality of My Current Situation sank in, the For Sale sign went up. The buyer seemed little interested in the story of the house, which was (to me) a very good one. The structure was nearing its second century. Built in 1910 from wood recycled from the old Harvard University football stadium, it had been the summer place for its builder and family for many years. Then a young couple bought it, winterized it, and added a dog and two children before out-growing the confines. I was the third owner.

I drove past it a year after the sale and found the house in a pile. Sticking out of one side was the vacuum cleaner I'd left behind; out of the other, the propane grill that I'd left on the porch. And nearby was rising the house that would replace the little cottage -- 4br/2.5b/2-car garage with pool in the back.

It's vanity to think we build monuments to ourselves. It is not, however, too vain to think that tangible evidence of our memories might last at least as long as we do. But not in this case, and not for me.

Anchored

Dear You,

From a seat at a table near the window at Isaac's Restaurant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the waterfront, you look out at the harbor. Nearly any day, I am certain, even the most marvelous meal wouldn't keep you from turning your head toward that scene. This day I wished I were a painter. Anything to keep it in memory longer than the time it took to finish my broiled scrod and settle the bill.

Down the block was the replica of the Mayflower, where it has been about a half-century already -- streams of tourists waited to step aboard her to see How It All Began. Between it and the main pier, where they tie up the big Captain John boats -- the ones you can take to watch whales off Stellwagen Bank or go further out and try to catch a fish -- dozens of smaller vessels pulled at their bouys, swinging whichever way the wind and tide dictated. And farther out were the jetties that protected the harbor, and the islands beyond them.

This was a gray, October day. Rain sieved through overcast in a way that made motorists along Water Street uncertain where to set their window wipers, and pedestrians kept unfurling their umbrellas and then putting them away again. On another day, the colors would have been more intense -- this day all was muted. It was a day for solemnity, serenity.

I thought, not for the first time, that we are ourselves like those small boats, temporarily moored in the tides and changing winds of life, shifting first one way and then another, poised for the next ride to wherever, subject to forces so much larger than ourselves that we only rarely pause to consider them. And since I am neither the painter the scene required, nor a poet who might have put it here more properly, I took the cell phone from my pocket and used it to take a photograph.

Fool's Paradise

Dear You,

I awoke today to a steady rain. Yesterday was cold and overcast as I prowled the Wareham Cranberry Festival, a cup of tepid coffee in hand. Today I may find myself on a train ride, bundled against the raw and looking out on dreary bogs as it chugs toward Sandwich.

Last week was mostly hot. I mean, "let's go for a ride in the car and turn on the air" sort of hot. This rented house in Brewster was poorly equipped for heat -- the little window air conditioner units were already in the closets.

In a note about travel, Emerson looked around at the sights and said he was unimpressed. One takes his giant with him wherever he goes, he observed. And here I am on Cape Cod to learn it is so. Uncomfortable bed (it sags), uncomfortable couches (nowhere to stretch out), uncomfortable toilet seat -- it's flimsy and shifts sideways! What a grouch I am, I think. I'm in a tourist mecca and yearn for home.

Perhaps around the next corner something will be revealed to make all this time and expense worthwhile. Perhaps on my gravestone someone will chisel: "He's still looking around the corner." Optimism, too, may be a fool's paradise.

The Tides

Dear You,

I'm staying in a rented house on Cape Cod, and Sunday's sermon at Our Lady of the Cape was a troubling one. The readings concerned a rich man, who had the best of everything all his life, and on whose doorstep was a poor man with sores all over his body. Ultimately they died, and the rich man saw from his place of eternal torment that the poor man was at the side of Abraham. The Bible is full of related lessons about the rich and the poor.

A couple of days later I took the ferry to Nantucket, seated in the first class cabin where I enjoyed coffee on the way out and wine on the way back. And in both directions my eye fell on hundreds of luxury boats -- at this season sitting at anchor where they probably won't be moved for weeks at a time. And I thought about the poor who were, as usual, invisible in my range of vision, but who must have been nearby somewhere -- there are so very, very many.

Some economist -- a Presidential advisor, I seem to remember -- justified the programs that benefited the rich by saying that a rising tide lifts all boats. And as I looked at the vessels around the ferry, I knew that to be so. The problem is that not everyone has a boat, and far too many will never have the means to get one.

Object Lessons

Dear You,

On a recent evening with friends I noticed a little pile of stones surrounding a potted plant on a side table. "I pick them up wherever I go," explained my hostess. And she listed some of her favorite places, each stone provoking a smile and a memory.

In nearly every room of my house are little things -- a tiny clock here, a glass figure there, little bits gathered from a long-ago beach walk and little presents brought back from trips. If I really worked at it, I could catalog them; no doubt, however, I would forget a few -- there are so very many. What I enjoy, then, is the happy discovery (and the resultant memory) when my eye falls on one of these when I am otherwise occupied. I might open a drawer, or push aside a photo frame, or reach for a book . . . and there it is: Didn't that come from Manomet? I muse?

No doubt nearby is an old woman or man in a nursing home, looking back and trying to recapture a lost adventure, struggling through the cobwebs of fading memory. If she or he is fortunate, some object from that past is at hand to light the way.

Shhhh. Listen

Dear You,

Despite all the notations on my calendar, I lead a quiet life. Last evening, sitting alone in a room darkened with the draperies drawn against the heat, holding the stem of my wine glass, I looked at the framed certificates on the wall, the academic accomplishments of my hosts for the dinner to come. And I reflected -- not for the first time -- that I now can look into a mirror that is already six decades deep.

What brought me to that room at that moment is, of course, the result of hundreds of decisions and choices that I made (many based on insufficient evidence, but let that pass for now). More, however, seem to have been the result of mere happenstance. And it occurs to me that at least a small measure of wisdom comes from knowing the difference.

I am no longer convinced, as I once was, that I am Captain of my Fate. I am not so arrogant to believe that I owe no debt to those many others who multiplied my efforts in life. I am not so smug to think there is no Higher Power that has put fortune in my path, often when I most needed it. What portion of ambition and intelligence I possessed and have been able to marshall along the way has taken me pretty far, I think. But those alone cannot explain why I sat there so contentedly, sampling a very nice little merlot and awaiting a dinner I did not earn.

Once more, sledding downhill

Dear You,

A key to most novels is discovering the effect of earlier events and decisions. Indulging her hypochondria, Zeena invites her pretty cousin Mattie to keep the house ... and husband Ethan comes to realize the awful truth of his loveless marriage. Crash. And isn't it interesting to ponder how many collisions you and I experience, the unforeseen consequencs of our youthful choices?

I thought of this last Saturday, when I picked up my three-month supply of various medications and signed the paper to pay $260. Nearly half of that is for the pill that keeps my arteries from becoming further clogged. Ninety tablets, $333.08 and the insurance pays $228.08 of it. I pay $105. At the time my thoughts divided: "Whew, I'm glad I don't have to pay the whole $928.91!" and "Yikes! $260 on the credit card!" and the second thought made me yearn for even better prescription medicine coverage.

Now, of course, I'm able to reflect further. And I know that my share (as well as that portion borne by ... whom? my neighbors, in some sense of the word) is the result of years of sloth (I loathe exercise) and greed (I love a triple bacon cheeseburger at the drive-thru). Way too late ... for Zeena, for me ... for you, too? ... comes reform. Zeena doesn't get her husband back (well, she does, but you'll have to read Ethan Frome to see how that works), and I can't take the stents from out my heart (Sorry, Poe). But I'm walking more often, and I haven't bought a burger in a year.

Along the barge canal

Dear You,

Hamlin Garland once observed that the highway is traveled by all sorts of people, but that the poor and the weary predominate. Still true today -- probably moreso. Yet I find in my time and in my place, the places where I find myself most often, the poor are invisible.

It was with surprise, then, that I came upon a vagrant yesterday. I was cycling along the barge canal just outside Pittsford (where per capita income is unarguably rather high), and I spotted what I took to be a pile of discarded clothes in the weeds beside the trail. As I passed I could see worn boots on one end and a cradled mass of hair at the other. My next thought was that it was a corpse and nearly stopped. Then I realized that this man was no doubt sleeping in the afternoon warmth, and the other bikers, hikers, joggers that were taking this path would surely have determined whether someone were dead or not!

A half hour or so later, as I was returning to where I'd left my car, I passed him again; this time he was afoot. Thin. Shambling along. Eyes downcast. He looked up, nodded. I nodded.

But for those two separated moments he exists only in my memory. Awhile later, as I sat outside a coffee shop, I watched people feeding the ducks, tossing crumbs from their bags into the water. ($1 a bag; available from the table near the door.) Young people walked by wearing tee shirts with names of universities across their chests, talking on their cell phones or discussing the contents of their shopping bags. Briefly I took notice of the young woman who selttled next to me on the bench to adjust her inline skates. Then I wondered -- again -- if the rumpled man was still walking along the canal . . . and where? Bushnell's Basin? on to Fairport? All the way out to Palmyra? Where would he find his dinner, and where his bed that night?

I can't know the answers because I did not stop . . . neither in the going out nor the coming back. I didn't stop to ask.

Round and round we go

Dear You,

Sixteen years ago we bought the house we now live in from Frank and Susan. It was in beautiful condition, with everything we were looking for . . . but facing a busy highway. The owners were already thinking of the time when their young daughter might go down the driveway on a bike and into the path of a speeding truck. Or something like it. So they put the house up for sale and were having one just like it built in a quieter part of town.

Yesterday evening my wife took one of those Alumni Fund calls from her alma mater -- a young woman named Lauren, an art major and very chatty . . . and soon learned that she is the now-grown daughter of Frank and Susan. The two talked of the sandbox that once sat under the willow tree in the back yard -- the first removed to plant grass and the other felled after an ice storm ruined it. How they both love our community and what it's like to attend that university now . . . and it ended with, of course, a donation to the school.

Lauren did in fact go down the driveway, where she continues to have all sorts of life-changing collisions and seems happy with who and what and where she is just now, just as over those 16 years have we.

I write this not just because it's another example of that well-worn observation of "Small World, Isn't It?" but because of its larger truth: that despite the apparent chaos of the universe, there is fundamentally a roundness to it all. Every decision, every choice -- even when it seems meaningless at the time (or worse, an error!) -- ultimately comes to some (probably unforeseen) end that brings equilibrium. Should we not take comfort in this awareness? We just think such things are in novels, not for us.

Making Waves

Dear You,

We have looked into the depths of the ocean and the far reaches of space, but who really knows the truth about himself? Like an onion, each of us is layers and layers of self-deception. A second cousin is in prison after years of lying to himself about his alcoholism . . . until he drunkenly wrecked his car and killed someone. Now, with years of time in a cell, he writes pages and pages of self-analysis. While I don't recommend a prison term, who among us would not profit from time spent looking within?

Recently someone quoted from a memoir: "You can't see your reflection in moving waters." I've been thinking about that, exploring its truth. The idea is that if one wants to plumb the depths of the least-understood place on earth, the Self, one needs quiet and solitude.

But I look at my calendar with dismay. Busy, busy, busy. A rushed trip to Ohio here, a dinner party there, tickets to this play and that symphony -- all before tackling the stack of books and magazines that daily continues to grow. As I type this, I have NPR on the radio, and I'm listening to news. Perhaps at one time "retirement" meant some period of quiet and the opportunity to reflect on one's life. Today, lacking the dramatic event that suggests one should make a change in his life, it appears as unlikely as my decision to write on tomorrow's calendar page, "7-9 a.m. Explore Self."

My Aunt's Legacy

Dear You,

Because she created such an imagined life, my aunt now finds herself in an awful fix. For over a half-century, Aunt G arranged everything as though she had been born into privilege. With a husband who did her bidding and worked sometimes three jobs to provide, she made her house secure, her acquaintances limited, and her outlook narrow. Now she is old and mostly friendless, and she is terrified.

I do not diminish her gifts, nor do I love her less for knowing all this. I have some sense of what it took her to move from a deprived childhood -- father dead when she was a teenager, the Depression making the family hungry and without a home, and who knows what else? I know she has always been intelligent. She has always been generous and loving to me. But on one enormous truth she was blind.

It matters little what you have -- possessions, money, clothes, address -- if you do not weave a tapestry of relationships while you can, before you grow cold with age and need the comfort only that can provide. What friends she had are dead or dying. Many in the family now keep their distance, and those who remain cannot possibly provide all that she requires.

On the occasions when I can visit I come away with great sadness.

Rolling Stones

Dear You,

In the river of Life are different kinds and sizes of rocks. Water rushes around the boulders, which remain in place over time. Smaller stones shift, but rarely and not very far. It's the pebbles that wash around and drift downstream that interest me.

Growing up in different towns in Ohio, I never felt much of an affinity to place. I attended three elementary schools and two junior highs before spending five years (!) in the town where I was graduated from high school . . . thence to leave and return only for the occasional school reunion. Without some research I could not list all my addresses. Even now, I'm comfortable in my "snowbird phase," living seasonally in the North and the South.

I'm always curious about those who were born, grew up, and remain in the same community. Such stability is foreign to me; sometimes I'm envious. Wouldn't it be interesting, I think, to live parallel lives, just to see how different would be my outlook. Well, the river wouldn't be the river without the variety of its stones.

Copping a Plea

Dear You,

Last year I broke the law. Well . . . in truth, I probably do that now and then, on I hope an irregular basis -- but who can tell? since there are so very many laws. And one can't be completely righteous, can one, without being a totally boring person? But I digress.

This law that I broke " counts" because I was arrested and fined. It was dark, I was driving up the hill that leads from Nunda to Mt. Morris (talk about out-of-the-way locations!), and the fellow ahead of me was realllllly poking along. So I pressed the pedal and went around him. When the lights lit up behind me, the deputy told me I was going faster than 80 mph. BEFORE the 55 mph zone had properly begun. Sigh.

After the formalities, he took particular note of my age and gray hair and explained that while I was no doubt safely buckled onto my seat, he was going to cite me for driving in violation of the seat-belt law. Not the speed. He and I both knew this would (a) save me money, and (b) avoid "points" against my license, which would (c) probably raise my car insurance bill. I thanked the young man and drove on. A week later I paid the $85 the court requested.

I write this because, among other laws I've violated since that night must be perjury. On the form the deputy gave me, I signed my name to a lie. And it makes me think -- not for the first time -- that our lives are governed by way too much chaos. It's never right/wrong or black/white. Threading my way through these Scyllas and Charybdes has never been easy.

Perhaps Four Ages, not Seven, of Man

Dear You,

Most of the year, a turn of the calendar page has no noticeable effect on the weather. Not so for September. Yesterday, as in the past, I was taken aback when, on arising, I heard crows at my feeder instead of the lesser birds, and I heard a distinct rustle of leaves, as if they were impatient for that time when they would change color and fall onto the lawn. Sure enough, when I walked out for the newspaper, the light and the air were filled with Autumn. It was a bit chilly to take my coffee to the patio table. Overnight, Summer had slipped away.

Winter will announce itself at any time. Somewhere between late October and Christmas, my mother used to look out and announce, "Well, it's spittin' snow" and we boys would go to the window to watch the first flakes. Spring makes tentative steps -- a balmy day in March will give way to another blizzard just as soon as allow the appearance of the first shoots of flowers. As for Summer, the end of the school year is the only real demarcation I've been able to decide on, whatever the calendar says.

Do you, too, detect that moment when it really is Fall? Or might this be just because I have reached "a certain age" and have grown hypersensitive to that which signals the end of things? If the stages of life are seasons, then I have certainly reached Autumn. And, yes, it did seem to have happened overnight.

Worst of Both Worlds

Dear You,

Ben brought his Nintendo when he came for a visit recently, and he wanted to trade a Pokemon character with someone. His device can connect wirelessly with others. A quick check with Google located a "hot spot" at the McDonalds just down the street, so off we went.

There we were yesterday -- Ben, with his french fries, thumbs a-blur on his toy, eagerly looking for someone on the planet with a like mind; and Grandpa, with a "senior" coffee, looking around at the others inhabiting this public place, thinking of very different subjects.

Let me be plain: we are faced with an epidemic of childhood obesity, and SAT scores yesterday were reported to be, once again . . . down. And I took my grandson to a place where he was mindlessly ingesting 380 empty calories (20 g. fat / 47 g. carbs) and "interacting" with symbols that represent people he will never really meet. Our bodies and our minds can enter many different worlds; some much better than others. For that hour, Ben and I were in what I know to be the wrong ones. I write with shame that my curiosity overcame my good sense. Today I'll do better with the time I have to spend with Ben.

My Life, in shreds

Dear You,

Shakespeare wrote: Who steals my purse steals trash; / ’t is something, nothing;’ Twas mine, ’tis his, /and has been slave to thousands; /But he that filches from me my good name /Robs me of that which not enriches him /And makes me poor indeed. Wasn't he farsighted, though, in anticipating "identity theft"?

Today in fact it is far better that someone steals the moneybag from your car (oops! Did I just let on that I have one in mine?) than some documents from your mailbox. I bought a shredder recently -- and although it's generally too troublesome to carry the junk mail to the basement and the little diamond-shaped remains back up, I know I SHOULD be doing it. When I'm cleaning out the files of old records, the grinding noise in the background at least gives me the illusion that I'm protecting myself against an increasingly dangerous world.

As I am doing all this, however, it does not escape my thoughts that here is just another bit of evidence that there really were "good old days." I still remember leaving campsites all day with possessions in plain sight on the picnic table. I recall that if there were locks on the doors to the houses I grew up in, they most certainly were not locked. (What if the neighbors need something and we're not home? my mother would have asked.)

Simply put, honesty and trust were in greater coinage then; today too many are busily stealing them. Too much has already been shredded.

An oral tradition

Dear You,

I like to hold babies. There's something quite peaceful in their faces, and something very comfortable about sitting in a rocking chair cradling a baby in my arm. For whatever reason, I soothe them -- perhaps it's the timbre of my voice. The baby I held yesterday is a girl and only a month old. She slept most of the time, even through periodically being passed from one family member to another.

Now and then through the afternoon she whimpered, and -- you know this already! -- she cried. What I saw was how rapidly someone stuffed a pacifier into her tiny mouth. Anyone can tell genuine distress from "fussiness," but both were treated the same. Not I. During my tenure when her crying didn't stop after a few seconds, I stood up and walked a few paces. Really, that's all it took.

Certainly it is painful to hear an infant cry -- one's impulse is to Do Something. But I don't think the Something should be to further encourage the fact that we take pleasure from (and avoid unhappiness with) our mouths. Here we are with a national epidemic of childhood obesity . . . and I can't help thinking of all the adults stuffing kids' faces with things to make them happier. Is this for the sake of the children, or is it just too much trouble for the grownups to exert themselves in other ways?

While I'm on the subject, what about the distressing tendency to keep the bored older children occupied in front of a television screen? Must we ruin their minds as well as their bodies?

For richer, for poorer

Dear You,

On a radio call-in program yesterday, a teacher was decrying the No Child Left Behind legislation that she -- and many, many others! -- claim has taken away nearly everything that was good about school. It is a favorite topic of mine, even nine years after I left the classroom. Indeed, when I first heard it called the No Teacher Left Standing act, I felt its truth.

In all the protests, what I rarely hear is the core of the legislation : NCLB is designed to cripple public schools and advance the cause of vouchers for private schools. In essence, it is merely another case of rich vs. poor.

In recent years a variety of the government's policies have widened the gap between those who have much and those without. Bankruptcy regulations favor lawyers and credit companies; tax cuts gave additional millions to millionaires, but virtually nothing to the poor; bail-outs for the banking industry encouraged the issuing of "sub-prime" mortgages at interest rates far exceeding rates offered to wealthy people; tarrif changes cost the working poor their jobs, and those who held on to them are forced to work fewer than 36 hours a week so the companies won't have to pay their health benefits. Dozens of other examples present themselves. Even the fact that the ruinous war against Iraq does not require sacrifice (no draft; no increase in taxation) -- except, of course, for the blood of the children of the poor! -- further diminishes our faith in government.

A democracy is nourished by citizens who honor and trust their leaders. Thoreau observed that while thousands hack at the branches of a problem, few know to dig at the roots. The roots are too often hidden, and our current crop of leaders thrive on the walls of secrecy they have thrown up.

Try it; you'll like it!

Dear You,

Because my mother showed me how to run a sewing machine when I was 14, I wound up four years ago stitching together some quilt blocks that kids in fifth grade created for a class project. That worked out okay, so I've gone on -- in addition to side projects, I've determined to make a quilt for each of The Twelve, as I term the dozen kids who call me Grandpa. Seven are done, and this morning I selected fabrics to begin one for Benjamin.

Isn't it the way so many habits are born? On some not otherwise remarkable day, you try something for the first time, and a couple of years later, you find it's part of your identity.

I still remember the little Kodak Brownie I got for Christmas in 1949, when I was just seven. Dad had learned darkroom techniques when he was in Italy, in the Army. He set us up in the kitchen, where after dark we turned on the yellow safelight as we swished the exposures through the chemicals and printed our pictures. Today I spend quite a bit of time -- now it's in color, and I print online or through my printer.

Am I a quilter? A photographer? Sure, those and more . . . and I'm starting to become curious about what I'll try tomorrow.

Shuffle

Dear You,

The upstairs back bedroom got a new coat of paint, and the queen-sized bed is now installed there. The middle bedroom has the twin beds, stacked, so that turns it back into the office it was a dozen years ago. Yesterday, after many trips up and down stairs from basement to third floor our possessions have been sorted, shuffled, and reorganized.

Some are being discarded. For books that means two things -- I'll set up a table at the end of the driveway today: "Free Books!" and they'll be gone by early afternoon. For the others, I've added the serial numbers from my BookCrossing membership, and I'll leave them (anonymously, of course) in public places. You can find them online at BookCrossing.com -- look for me there -- I'm "Manomet" to that fraternity.

It's good now and then to turn stuff over, as one does with a compost pile; the result yields something more profitable than if it just sits there year after year. "Oh, I was going to read that book -- I'd forgotten it was there!" I exclaim. Or "I'll bet Chuck would enjoy reading this one -- I'll send it to him." "This old thing still hanging around, taking up space? Pitch it!"

And that's not even considering how clean and fresh things look . . . for now.

The pleasure of my company

Dear You,

With no expectation (and little hope) of increasing my wealth beyond my pension, my chief source of income now is time . . . a dwindling resource, one to be hoarded. As a result, I have no wish to spend it in occupations I dislike.

In recent years I have been declining invitations, and I have done my best to avoid the company of disagreeable persons. I leave it to others to increase someone's happiness in those instances where I can find better uses of my time.

For instance, by finding time to be alone. As it turns out I enjoy my own company; I have learned that solitude has nothing whatsoever to do with loneliness. "I'm bored" has not crossed my lips -- perhaps ever. Certainly not in my memory. And I am astonished to hear it from others. Indeed, it is one of the litmus tests about someone as to whether I might like to spend time or energy on them: "Tell, me. Under what circumstances are you bored?" Any answer but 'None!' would be the wrong one.

It is a crowded and noisy world -- I need no more distractions as I continue to search for what nourishes me.

Anniversaries

Dear You,

Another couple of mileposts drifted by yesterday. The more recent one -- thirty years' standing -- was the death of my mother. The cancer beat her to her 53rd birthday, and her death was a relief from more than two years of torment . . . operations and radiation and pills. With shame I note that our relationship in the years just before had been strained. Pride -- another of the rightly called "deadly" sins -- kept me away from her, turned away her overtures, stayed my hand from writing a letter or dialing a telephone. Then the cancer. Some reconciliation, but not enough. Thirty years has not lessened the guilt I carry when I think of her, and I think of Mother often.

The other was a promise I made on an August 17 just three years earlier, which if kept would mean celebrating 33 years of marriage. In a box in my bureau drawer is an antique gold pocket watch and a hand-made gold ring -- gifts on that long-ago day from my then-wife, and objects I rarely look at and cannot dispose of: ironically, because unlike the woman who gave them they cannot be discarded.

When I think about my life, I am aware that women have been more important than men to me, that women have affected me, shaped me, informed me more than those of my own gender. And I wonder -- often -- why I have been too often cavalier in my treatment of them. The passing of years has not done enough to solve this riddle.

Olden Days

Emily and I are talking about the past. We are sitting inside a cobblestone house built a century before the shopping mall across the way, decades before the invention of the automobile that brought us to the table where we are drinking my double-tall fat-free latte and her mocha frappaccino, years before my own grandmother was born. The house is still there because Starbucks saved it from the bulldozers clearing land on either side to make way for other shops.

We look at windows made of hand-blown glass, an original fireplace with bookcases on the side, wide moldings around the door, and we wonder about the lives that passed through what had been this front parlor before it held our table and chairs. Visitors must once have presented themselves at the front door, and tradesmen delivered goods to the back. What kind of outbuildings once stood nearby?

On what is now heavily traveled Route 96 between Victor and Pittsford, agriculture has given way to commerce, and unless the Starbucks sign above the portico turns heads, most passersby may not even notice this architectural jewel that has seen if not better days, certainly ones almost unimaginably different from our own.

Another day in school

Dear You,

If you work it right, each day of life is a lesson. Each person you encounter is your teacher. With my granddaughter Emily visiting from Long Island, I am once again reminded of this.

Emily, like me, loves to read. Unlike me, she reads really, really fast. More importantly, she reads -- and introduces me to -- stuff that would have escaped my notice. This time she brought me her copy of "The Twelve Kingdoms" by Fuyumi Ono. It's fantasy, a narrative and related to other forms from Japan: anime and manga. Not my taste, I would have said two days ago, but now I'm well into the story and its fictional world. Lesson: (excuse the cliche) don't judge books by covers. (How often do I need to learn this lesson? Apparently, on a regular basis.)

Emily has much more to teach me. Indeed, I could write eleven more blogs -- one for each of the children who call me Grandpa. Each one who has crawled into my lap has brought information from a world that no one else but they inhabit, news from places I might otherwise never have visited.

Free, at last

Dear You,

Cameras are coming to Rochester's streets. Here in Upstate New York, video policing will begin in a year or so, just as it does in several other big cities around the country. Bad People will be under surveillance . . . and so will I. And you, too. The police have already put audio sensors in the area to pinpoint the location of a gunshot. For years now I've noticed cameras watching me as I withdraw money from my ATM, shop at stores, pump gasoline . . .

No, I don't feel an increased level of safety. And it's because I don't trust "authorities" with the records of my life. The men who wrote the Constitution were justifiably wary of government -- it's why they wrote so many privacy provisions into our laws. Jefferson (was it?) said that a people who wanted to be both safe and free would be neither.

Safety is a chimera. I'm astonished that so many today embrace her. On a radio program recently, caller after caller endorsed recent laws that -- to me -- further weaken our Bill of Rights . . . and I'm not talking about that idiotic Rush Limbaugh show; it was National Public Radio!

Who said that we get the government that we deserve? And if that is true, what does this say about us in the 21st Century of "human progress"?

Pick and Choose

Dear You,

I've been listening to wives talk about their lives. And it's true -- they think and act differently from men.

An overheard example -- J. was talking with K. about how she (J.) had bought and owned houses in the past 30 or so years. Looked at a lot. Compared features. Talked about them with various friends. Finally settled on one: "Well, it has potential. We could . . ." and off would start a multi-year plan to fix this, add that, reorganize the other . . . paint or wallpaper or redo the kitchen flooring . . . you get the idea. Spouse: "Whatever you think, Dear." And I remember a process 15 years or so ago, trudging through several houses and opening the door to this one, thinking, "Ah, yes. Perfect." This morning I'm putting a second coat of paint on the walls of the back bedroom.

It was the same way a couple of years ago, when we found our "snowbird home" in Florida. Three days of "not a chance" (in my mind, at least) followed by, "Ah, yes. Perfect" for the one we now have there.

I suspect (not really knowing the female mind as well as I ought after all these years of studying them) that this process is consistent across a range of issues. In the early 90s I found myself in search of a companion. When I found K. I thought, "Ah, yes. Perfect." For her part, after several months of considering X, Y and Z, I can now imagine her thinking finally -- as now -- "Well, he has potential. I could . . ."

Oops, excuse me a minute . . . I hear her calling me. (Whatever you say, Dear.)

This Little Piggie . . .

Dear You,

Too often, I react to the sight and smell of food in ways that make me think about Pavlov's dogs. This is especially noticeable around 5 in the afternoon, when it's time for a little something to stave off the pangs and brace myself for the evening to come.

And it is especially so when guests are arriving, the cork has been pulled (with another bottle standing by in support), and I'm under strict instruction not to think about serving the entree until "at least 6:30!"

Last evening it was "something new" for an hors d'oeuvre: Texas Caviar. Mix black beans, black-eyed peas, shoepeg corn, pimentos and jalapenos with garlic and shallots . . . I'm uncertain about the rest of it, and come to think of it, you're perhaps better off not knowing. I tucked in, scoop after scoop onto corn chips. An hour later when I finally lighted the grill, I really had little interest in the dinner to come, but gluttony will be served. I did my best, and that nice little chardonnay helped me along.

Shortly afterward, I took to bed. Then (I blush to provide detail; I'll mention abdominal rumblings, trips to the bathroom, thoughts of suicide) the hour or so of pleasure became several hours of counting my sins. Around 2 in the morning, I was finally able to grasp pen and paper to sketch out these remarks. Now it is morning, and I'm wondering what's for breakfast . . .

Flowers and Weeds

Dear You,

Along my driveway is a post-and-rail fence, beneath which I have planted clematis and roses -- the last a climber and a hybrid tea. Properly tended, it all looks quite picturesque, especially in mid-June, when the climber explodes in a riot of red and the clematis on either side rewards me with shows of deep blue and opalescent white.

Now, however, as August deepens, the thing is a mess. I've been out of town often and neglected my weeding and watering, and a thicket of opportunistic weeds has flourished. I see crabgrass, cornflower, dandelion, a thistle and a couple of others I can't name. And isn't this a morality tale in the growing?

During my career I taught students Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," reading it over each year myself in preparation of my lessons. (Note to the reader: it really does become easier the eighth or ninth time, and by 20 it's a cinch.) In later readings I came to enjoy the way NH used Nature (as he capitalized it) to tell his story -- particularly the "burdock, pigweed, and apple-peru" of the opening chapter to balance the "wild rosebush" of that first June day. The careful reader comes to the conclusion that the weeds represent sins, failings, and flawed characters, and the flowers are the opposite. Later mentions of weeds and flowers work the same way and intensify the plot.

What happens when weeds are not uprooted? When flowers are not tended? Well, isn't that a lesson for us all? Sooner than later, I really must get my gloves and trowel and work along that fence. And what else? Well, as I work, I'll most likely be reflecting on other lessons of my life.

Sporting Life

Dear You,

Last weekend I found myself in proximity with a number of men -- friends of each other but of only passing acquaintance with me. Such encounters are never comfortable; since I am often not part of the conversation, I seek excuses to be elsewhere.

It was my wife's school reunion. Three dozen or so classmates, along with a number of us spouses . . . and several of us were at the same motel. The morning after the dinner/dance and before the traditional afternoon/evening soiree at a nearby home, a half-dozen or so men appeared at the complimentary breakfast area, all dressed in golf attire. Now middle-aged, they looked relaxed, easy with each other, joking and sharing their mutual past. And headed out for a morning of golf.

I do not golf. Unlike them, I played no sports in high school. I had no stories to share about the Big Game or That Winning Shot or a Beloved Coach. And I don't think that I "play" in life the way I concluded that they did and still do.

For example, it was interesting to see how they decided who would ride in whose automobile and in which seat as they headed out. It's the sort of detail that is not part of the plan to "play golf tomorrow morning" along with the course and tee time. But seamlessly as they must have made plays 40 years earlier, they created a natural formation, opened doors and drove away.

Not for the first time, I thought about how high school affects each of us in its time of sorting-out. And I felt a bit of envy for those who played games in addition to all that which has shaped our subsequent history.

Rightful Heirs

Dear You,

The first time I saw the bumper sticker, I laughed. "We're spending our grandchildren's inheritance" it read. Since I had only recently retired, I could appreciate the notion of the now "empty nesters" hitting the road and spending some of what they had accrued in their years of employment.

Years later it occurs to me that it's no longer funny. It seems that we, the aging generation, are indeed spending our grandchildren's inheritance, especially in the larger sense. We are using up that which each generation has handed down to the next -- our natural resources, our fossil fuels, our native forests, our wild plant and animal environment. Suburbs sprawl in all directions, and by sheer dint of our numbers we make for congestion and worse; even the air is unclean and the water fouled in many places.

Why this profligacy? Some time ago I read an interesting piece about diminishing resources. If, say, a certain fish stock is threatened with extinction, and only careful management will save the species, it is more likely that -- in the absence of governmental restriction -- a rush will ensue to take the very last one before someone else gets to it. In short, greed is powerful. It seems that those of us born after the world wars have become accustomed to luxury. We will not be denied . . . even if it means our grandchildren may have to do without.

Wow. Really...

Dear You,

"Wow!" said my grandson, after raising himself from the electronic game console to look out the car window at the river. Gabriel and I were on a 210 mile journey to return him to his mother after his three-day visit with us this weekend. I-86 is a beautiful roadway in any season, and now in deep Summer it features mountainsides and streambeds and little villages glimpsed now and then. As I drove, I was conscious of the bleeps and clicks and annoying scraps of "music" that accompanied his GameBoy version of Spongebob Squarepants. He is an addict.

Trying to lure him toward the beauties of the natural world, I interrupted his play now and then by suggesting he observe what to my eye was especially beautiful outside the car, and he dutifully obeyed, returning quickly to the toy. On this occasion, I was struck by the false sincerity in his voice. "Wow!" But not really. "You're so square," he might have said had he been a child in my time of growing up. He is seven.

Someone said of being an actor that you know you're good if you can fake sincerity. How easily and early some children learn this! With this final attempt to wean him away from the artificial to the real, I left him to his imaginary world and watched the scenery pass by. "Wow!" I thought . . . quite sincerely.

Bleak House

Dear You,

Why do you suppose that fictional representations of the future are so often bleak? As I continue my current read -- one of my "beach books," my term for light reading -- I keep thinking of other novels. This one is a thriller set a half-century hence, the murder victims getting their comeuppance because of their Frankenstein-like efforts to create beautiful and intelligent young women.

Why do so many writers imagine an Orwellian future in telling their stories? Were they influenced by Huxley's "Brave New World" of over-population and genetics experiments? Orwell's "1984" of perpetual war and Big Brother surveillance? The list is much longer than I want to note here, and that's not even touching recent as well as classic movies. Like millions of others recently, I got the seventh and last Harry Potter book, and I notice in the early chapters how different are the tone and characters and plot compared with those first installments. Harry has "grown up" and his future is grimmer than his past. So goes the world, apparently!

My only reference here comes from comparing my life with that of my father's -- child of the Great Depression and wounded veteran of World War II, struggling for so many years to achieve the American Dream . . . which I inherited and too often take for granted. I imagine the future to be better and better. Even so, it certainly is entertaining to visit a much darker world in my reading.

Black and White

Dear You,

When I was much younger, I prided myself on my liberal outlook -- my tolerance of others and their differences. Yes, I grew up in a monoculture: small-town Ohio. And goodness knows my father had no use for "others" -- and that list was pretty long. I had absorbed my share of sexist and racist jokes.

But I had outgrown all that. I had gone to a university, and I lived in the "inner city" of Rochester, NY, where my neighborhood only years before had been the scene of race riots. I talked a very good game. Why, "some of my best friends were black"!

Pride goeth before a fall, it is said. And there came that evening when I was returning home with my then-wife M. We pulled to the curb (we had no off-street parking there) and as I was about to get out I saw three young, black men walking toward us. They were in the middle of the lamp-lit street, and I calculated instantly -- three young black men vs. an adult male and female, and at that hour no one to see. "Let's stay in the car for a minute," I said as I pushed down my doorlock.

Moments later the three youths were passing by our car. One of them turned toward us, hooked his thumbs into both sides of his mouth, stuck out his tongue and waggled his fingers in that same way I once did to make fun of my friends in Ohio. All three laughed and continued on their way. I burned with shame. Years later, as I write this, I still feel mortified.

In a book called "In Black and White" a writer with the NY Times (I have forgotten his name) tells of similar experiences he had when a college student in Chicago. At night he would hear car door locks thunking down and see frightened faces as he passed by. In a short while his shame turned to anger, and he began to adopt threatening poses when he could. He became what his racist neighbors assumed he was: a menace.

And I wonder -- looking back a quarter-century, now -- what did I do to add to our national climate of racism? And have I atoned for it since?

Tubs

Dear You,

It has been disconcerting this summer to be in companionship with so many people -- friends and acquaintances -- who have shown an aversion to "serious talk." By that I mean just about anything relating to events on a larger stage than the little area around us. I have thought of Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River," where one of the characters, a cooper, or barrel maker, scoffs at his fellows, saying they think they see Life, but all they see is the "rim of their tub."

Because we are confined to our bodies and to just a few years of history, our experiences in life are narrow. It takes an effort to leave our comfortable surroundings and see what Life -- in a wider sense -- is like, and even then we will never fully know. As a man, I would like to understand the lives of women. As someone born in the mid-twentieth century, I am curious about the ancestors . . . how is my perception different from someone younger? What about those reared in different cultures?

While I remain forever walled in my own Self, I have long sought windows -- I read newspapers and news magazines, I listen to National Public Radio, and (of course!) I read Serious Books. What I believe is that one cannot otherwise be much of a citizen. But what I have experienced in too many recent encounters are fear, anger, distrust, and suspicion, along with an unwillingness to explore whether those feelings are warranted. And I confess, it makes me feel a bit lonely.

Booked Solid

Dear You,

By my rough calculation my brothers and I collectively have been reading books for over a century and a half. We read voraciously -- have done so since we learned how. I noticed that habit again on my recent visit with them. When nothing else beckons, we reach for a book, and a book is always within reach. We have devoured them by the hundreds.

My current book concerns the 1854 cholera outbreak in London -- The Ghost Map. A friend lent me her copy, and I expect quite a few others will read that copy . . . and its clones . . . before it joins other titles down the River Styxx of memory. I love the way my friends and acquaintences think of me when they finish reading something they have enjoyed. I love the way a library card opens the door to a myriad of books wherever I go. I love BookCrossing (it's online!) to see what others are reading, so that when I paw through the remainders tables at Borders or B&N I can do more than "judge a book by its cover" that I've spotted for $3.95 And of course I love yard sales, where I've purchased an entire box of books for a couple of bucks.

So there we were in northern Michigan, my brothers and I, talking about books along with all the other things we have in common. If "reading maketh a whole man," then we were certainly being wholly ourselves.

Second-hand Emotions

Dear You,

I attended the wedding, even though I wasn't invited, and found myself at the reception (after the invited guests had finished their meals, of course) drinking a glass of water and eating cake. My wife's sister's daughter was the Maid of Honor . . . long story. Anyway, it was a hand-me-down invitation, I guess, so I didn't feel guilty about the cake.

The dancing had started only a little while earlier. The deejay paused his sound system to announce that the Father of the Bride had a few words . . .

"When your only child says she's getting married, I suppose everyone has many thoughts." So far, so good. "So, I went on the Internet . . ." Huh? What about the thoughts that 'everyone' might have . . . in this case, his? After that brief (original?) introduction, he took a paper from his pocket and began, "I wish for you this so you might know that / I hope you this so you might then that . . . blah-blah-blah." (You can, obviously, find the accurate full-text on the Internet.) By the time he was finishing with the dozen or so items on the print-out, he was choking back his tears.

Why is it that we depend on things outside ourselves in order to find words for our emotions? How did Hallmark cards become the ubiquitous deliverer of our joy at a birth, our sympathy for death, and everything in between? I notice the same lines spoken at wakes in my local funeral home as those spoken in the movies -- have we nothing original left to say?

The Gun

Dear You,

My father was dying, and he was giving things away. So he came out of his bedroom that afternoon with the medals he'd earned in World War II, and a little pistol. It was, he explained, the .25 caliber gun he had taken from a Nazi officer -- his "pocket pistol," to distinguish it from the larger revolver the man had on his belt. I took it home and found his note that the Nazi was General Wolff, and the newspaper clipping that was with the gun explained he was SS, second to Himmler.

I took the gun home, learned to disassemble and clean it, ensured the clip and chamber had no bullets, and put it in a drawer. Today it is in my luggage, because I'm taking it to Michigan to give to my youngest brother for his birthday.

Some gift, you will say. You may look at this gun, think of its first owner, and speculate about the destruction it probably caused in that terrible period, when General Wolff was responsible for shipping so many human beings to their deaths. Should not a device, like its owner, be consigned to the rubbish heap of history?

The gun lobby often says that "guns don't kill people; people kill people," and I have no doubt that my brother will use this pistol as he does his other guns -- for sport, for recreation, for the same kind of pleasure he and I will derive from the fireworks I bought while passing through Pennsylvania . . . also intended to celebrate his birthday.

And perhaps someday, that gun will be another way for people to preserve the memory of the terrible past . . . another way to help us prevent a future holocaust.

Fear

Dear You,

In a recent issue of the Atlantic, I read about the growing problem of online predators. The story began with an anecdote -- a girl standing at a bus stop with her luggage nearby was engaged by a stranger who seemed to know a lot about her. Turns out, he had read her luggage tag, so was able to seem like someone who knew her parents. The article went on to inform us that anyone can deduce an astonishing amount of information from what kids put on places like MySpace and blogs they create.

Fearmongering has some merit -- we must teach children to be wary in today's world. But my worry is that we are sapping the present generation of their courage in an effort to keep them safe. It does not escape my notice that the current occupant of the White House could never have been re-elected had he not campaigned on a platform of 9/11 and the "War on Terror." Someone (was it Benjamin Franklin?) once said that anyone who wants to be both safe and free can be neither.

So it was a delight the other morning when, on my morning walk, I witnessed two little girls zipping by me on a tiny motorized bike. They were blissfully happy and laughing, and -- amazingly -- did not have pounds of plastic padding and helmets between them and the out-of-doors they were inhabiting at the moment. They waved as they passed . . . innocent of the dangers their parents -- all of us these days! -- seem eager to protect them from. I hope they never lose their courage, their independence, their joy in pushing against the limits of their lives.

Reading

Dear You,

It is not possible for me to remember not being able to read, nor was there ever a time since I began when reading was not a deep pleasure. For many years I have said that if Heaven is the place with no books, I would seriously consider spending eternity elsewhere -- anywhere there might be the written word. I am compulsive about print. I read the cereal box even if it is the same material I read the day before.

My morning begins, though, not with cereal but with coffee and the newspaper, and I am distressed by the possibility that I will outlive newsprint -- I read that papers are folding everywhere in the world in favor of other media people are using to get their information. I linger over the newspaper, even though the one here in Rochester, New York is not much of a paper -- not compared to, say, the St. Petersburg Times, which I have access to in the winter months.

While I scan every headline and read most of the paper, I don't read every story. For instance, on page 2C today, under "My Pet World" I saw the headline, "Blot out cat urine before neutralizing the odor." Even then I registered the first sentence (Q: You once wrote about cleaning up cat urine.) before tearing my eyes downward in search of something . . . well . . . something a tad more interesting to me.

Still, reading remains always at least potentially valuable. Should I ever find myself with an incontinent cat, I will know to search the archives for this bit of information. But not today.

Collisions

Dear You,

This morning I read a newpaper account that began, "After a night of bar-hopping with friends, a law school student was at the controls of a motorboat when it broadsided...another boat on Skaneateles Lake, killing a Virginia police officer and his girlfriend..." The facts: 2:40 a.m.; 32-year-old U of AZ student; two friends in boat were ejected, after which he stopped to pick them up before leaving for his family's camp, four miles across the lake . . . without aiding the people he'd hit. Later, his (sober?) 25-yr. old brother, in an attempt toprotect the older one, told investigators that he had been driving the boat. The story fell apart, as these things so often do, and this fellow will soon face felony charges.

I cite this as the most recent of several instances that I have seen of people acting recklessly, without regard to others, and who subsequently fail to accept responsibility. Whatever has happened to "Yes, I did it, and I am sorry"?

As I read the story this morning, I could not help thinking of my parents, who were so amazingly honest and honorable in every dealing I witnessed while growing up in Ohio. I still have a book from my mother, who inscribed "To Paul, toward a noble manhood." Whenever I have failed the ideals my parents set for me, it has not been because I had no teachers.

But today? Not even those occupying the White House can be cited as models of proper behavior. Not even to say, "We have made mistakes, and we are sorry." Not even a young law student, it seems, can be expected to behave properly today. We should all be sorry about that.

Conspicuous Consumption

Dear You,

My customary morning walk is uphill in the beginning. That way the end of the trip is something I really look forward to. A nearby winery has given that neighborhood its name: Vineyard Hill. I walk by three-car garages and long, rolling lawns, and the cars that pass me are similarly big -- SUVs, their colors ranging from white to black without anything from the rainbow in between, but invariably driven by a woman. She provides the color, and makes me think of a bouquet inside a box. Ponytail tosses a wave on her way to the grocery store, gunning the engine out of her driveway, and I plod on.

It is toward the middle of the walk when I get my reward. Among all the other 5br4bath homes sits one that truly stands out. It is a festival of lawn decoration. Full-size bronze horses, one pulling a bronze trotter cart, scatter about the yard. Twirling boys and girls, all metal, dance among the bushes, near -- unaccountably -- several wire-sculpted deer. Gazing globes, elves, windmills, assorted wildlife creatures . . . too much to record here! Near the house stand several Greek-inspired columns surrounding an enormous globe, with a fountain going most days. Each item by itself might be worthy of study -- these things are clearly expensive. But the assemblage is a chaos of different scales, colors, and types.

When I was a child, I delighted in a newspaper drawing that challenged me to find "What is Wrong with this Picture?" A photograph of this house would be similarly interesting. I speculate what the neighbors think.

And I wonder: what does it say about someone who must give this much publicity to his wealth?

Turning Leaves

Dear You,

While on a whale-watching excursion out of Plymouth, Massachusetts, several years ago, I observed at the back of the vessel a man flanked by two boys, each engrossed in a paperback book. Since they were dressed similarly and bore resemblances to each other, I took them for father and sons. We had been out of sight of shore for over an hour already, with another hour to go before reaching the Stellwagen Banks, where the whales most likely were to be seen.

I looked around at the other passengers -- some in quiet conversation, others fiddling with camera equipment, quite a few with portable listening devices and nodding or tapping to music flowing from headsets, and not a few who were just staring at the vacant seascape. Here and there was someone else looking at print: the tour brochure, a magazine . . . but I saw only those three with books. In the years since, I have observed this same situation in a variety of public places.

How to explain this loss of the habit of reading? (An exegesis, no doubt, too lengthy for this space!) Kosinski called Americans a "nation of videots" and Mencken sneeringly invented decades earlier "Boobus Americanus." If those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, I think those who aren't readers cannot be very good citizens -- certainly not in a democracy, which can be sustained only by people of reason.

I think of those three readers afloat in the Atlantic, just a few years before their fellow Americans -- those who managed to get to the polls at all! -- voted into office a man who can scarcely read his own teleprompter, and who, with little sense of, and no regard for, history, has so damaged our country that it will be years undoing him if at all. Incredibly, We, the People, returned to the polls and elected him again!

Wasn't anyone reading?

Missing You

Dear You,

As a school teacher I often was greeted at my classroom door by a student who had missed class the previous day. "Did I miss anything?" Sometimes I laughingly responded that, because s/he was absent, we had decided to do nothing that day, so the answer was "No, you didn't miss anything at all." If I had a couple of extra moments, however, my customary answer was more serious, and I explained that whatever s/he had missed, it was far less important than what the rest of us had missed -- "You."

I would explain that a class was the sum of its parts, not just whatever was in my lesson plan for that day. And if anyone was missing, the sum was diminished. So often, a student would ask a question or offer an opinion, and the entire lesson turned a different corner . . . many times to a surprising and remarkable place. I learned to watch for such opportunities.

It seems to me that it's what happens when someone goes missing from my life. Whatever a day might hold for me, it will be less than it was. An easy example is what my parents might still be teaching me if they had been granted longer lives. If one of the purposes is, as I believe, to continue learning, the loss of every potential teacher is profound. I am now old enough to know when I am diminished . . . and why.

A Water View

Dear You,

The storm gave way to light clouds and peeks of sunshine, so the lakeside cottage owner suggested a boat ride. In my everyday life, my view of any of the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York is from the highway, often during the tasting-trips I like to take to wineries. On this occasion, I was able to see through the looking-glass . . . that is, from the reverse of the usual.

For many years I have marveled at the idea that people could own more than one house and all that goes with it -- a boat, for example. Such a life surpasses need, the existance of so many who share our planet. In that life, one can live near the water (or not), can take a boat out onto that water (or not), even just look at the water whenever it takes your fancy (or not). It is a life of options, of choice.

I'm not talking about luxury. As we cruised near the shoreline we passed many houses that looked old and modest and well-loved. Perhaps the parents or grandparents had constructed them (as was the case of the cottage I was visiting), and they had devolved through the next generation or two. A sailboat hauled onto the little beach, a propane grill near a picnic table, a few plastic chairs, a towel over a branch to dry . . .

What caught my eye at length, however, was increasing evidence of such dwellings being bought, bulldozed, and replaced with "McMansions." These were way out of scale to their environment, with 2- and 3-bay boathouses, along with the docks that were two-storey affairs (a deck on top, for parties above the water?). Conspicuous consumption, to my eye.

Ahhh, for earlier, simpler times, when one's wealth did not jump out of the photographs.

Endurance

Dear You,

The cashier at the supermarket wore a wrist guard for her carpal tunnel injury and had a long story to tell the customer just ahead of me. The customer waved her checkbook around, along with a plastic gift card, and her groceries were piled high and chaotically on the belt, which in turn barely moved forward. The clerk was new at the job, and since the customer had not taken the time to weigh her own produce and affix the little barcodes to the plastic baggies, each of those had to be looked up on the card near the machine, then weighed.

I always weigh my produce. In addition I group my groceries and put their barcodes down or facing forward as I remove them from the cart onto the belt. This makes the process go so much faster, you see. It's because everything in my life in recent years has been going faster. I use a faster computer with high-speed broadband. I carry a cellphone so I can talk to anyone I want as soon as I wish. I pay for things with my credit card -- no time to give and receive change.

In the next ten minutes the cashier and customer were buddies. "I was nicknamed 'Pokey' when I was a little girl," gushed the shopper when the clerk apologized . . . again . . . for going so slow. ("Ahh," I thought. "Soulmates.") I helpfully waved off the next two customers who tried to join me in line and watched them leave the store as the belt ground slowly forward enough for me to add my things -- barcodes down and/or forward, naturally. My breathing slowed, and I looked through a tabloid to see why She-Moviestar was angry enough to divorce He-Moviestar and who was about to give birth to an alien baby. In short, I found myself seeking some peace in this busy world. Then I turned over my shopping list and wrote this short essay.

Now I'm sitting here, madly typing before tackling the next three items on my ToDo list that sits on my desk.

Budgeting

Dear You,

Over the years I've come to understand that we have only two things to spend: Time and Money. It is also clear to me that no one spends these things in the same way.

My mind goes back to a moment when I was standing in an electronics store with my then-wife (I'll call her M. here . . . and whenever she pops up in my musings). I was looking at a turntable, and when M. said, "But you don't need it" I answered, "I want it." The comeback was quick: "Well, that's it then." She understood the difference before I did. (I add, with a pang, that I was neither so wise nor generous, when some weeks later M. wanted to purchase some things for the house that we might both have enjoyed. Ahhh, hindsight.)

Time is the same way. Thoreau remarked, "As if you can kill Time without injuring Eternity." Smart guy, Henry D. If I spend time writing my thoughts in this blog instead of, say, re-reading "Walden," who is to say yes or no to that?

Whatever the commodity, the key is budgeting. One of these days the Money may run out. For certain, Time will.

S E T I

Dear You,

Somewhere in the West there may still be standing an array of curved metal devices, all pointed at the sky, and each programmed to "listen" to whatever electronic signals may come to the Earth. Scientists set them up in a Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. The idea is that we are not alone in this universe. Perhaps we are not. We don't yet know.

I thought of those "dishes" today when I noticed that one of my blog posts had attracted a comment. It came in from across the Atlantic Ocean, farther from my home than I have ever travelled, so I guess it qualifies as "extra terrestrial" to me.

Perhaps when I began writing these snippets of prose, these reactions to the daily flow of my life, I wondered if anyone would ever see them. Now someone has, and I perceive them as little satellite dishes, aimed outward and listening for reactions. Over my lifetime I have sometimes wondered how solitary is an individual -- no one's trajectory through time and space is like anyone else's; we begin somewhere and we end somewhere else . . . a bit of matter whizzing through existence. Sometimes we have company during our journey, and sometimes we explore on our own.

When I spotted that return message, I was filled with a sense of companionship. It's good that we aren't alone.